


homecoming and other pleasures

by heyitsathrowaway



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, background hubert/ferdinand, background uh. hubert/dorothea/edelgard/byleth, have you met the black eagles. all those bitches are in love, they are married and in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-27 10:08:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21390391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heyitsathrowaway/pseuds/heyitsathrowaway
Summary: In the weeks after Dorothea proposed—proposed, sometimes she still can’t believe she did that—she occasionally wondered whether she’d made a mistake. Hubert certainly seemed to think so. He had a bit of a dazed look about him every time they spoke in the intervening time. But in the end, it all worked out so wonderfully. Some days she really doesn’t trust it. When has anything in her life ever been this easy?But it is easy, with Hubert. With him and the professor and Edie. He’s sosweetin his own serious way. Dorothea feels so safe in his arms, almost relaxed. She always thought love was meant to be exciting, and oh, it is. It makes her heart beat faster and her skin tingle and her toes curl, but it also fills her with such a lovely warm closeness when Hubert touches her, like a bath drawn at just the right temperature. She could luxuriate in it for hours.
Relationships: Dorothea Arnault/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 7
Kudos: 96





	homecoming and other pleasures

**Author's Note:**

> this is purely onscreen hubert/dorothea, but dorothea/hubert/edelgard/byleth and hubert/ferdinand are also mentioned because like, what are we even doing here, you know? you know? poly black eagles rights. anyway i think about the dorothea/hubert supports and ending like, all the time, because the thing is they're in love.

In the weeks after Dorothea proposed—_proposed_, sometimes she still can’t believe she did that—she occasionally wondered whether she’d made a mistake. Hubert certainly seemed to think so. He had a bit of a dazed look about him every time they spoke in the intervening time. But in the end, it all worked out so wonderfully. Some days she really doesn’t trust it. When has anything in her life ever been this easy? 

But it is easy, with Hubert. With him and the professor and Edie. He’s so _sweet_ in his own serious way. Dorothea feels so safe in his arms, almost relaxed. She always thought love was meant to be exciting, and oh, it is. It makes her heart beat faster and her skin tingle and her toes curl, but it also fills her with such a lovely warm closeness when Hubert touches her, like a bath drawn at just the right temperature. She could luxuriate in it for hours.

Dorothea has been away for quite a spell this time. To Vestra territory, in fact. Hubert believed old allies of his father might still be active, and of course, there hadn’t been an opera held there in years. They were quite happy to see her. She almost forgot until confronted with the ferocity of the applause that she was Dorothea von Vestra now. It was her home.

The opera was just as cheerfully exhausting as usual, and her own particular work equally so. She never would have expected that she would be so skilled at rooting out conspiracy, but it turns out following the crooked lines of gossip and bribery is just the same within and without an opera company. 

Hubert’s father really was quite a piece of work. Dorothea feels a sharp little pang of grim satisfaction whenever she thinks about him crumpling at his son’s feet. 

She’d asked Hubert for lessons, once. On killing fathers. Just in case she ever happens to meet her own again. He’d taken her seriously in a way she thinks no one else in the world would; he’d gotten down on his knees and vowed to do the job himself, if it ever came to that. He offered to find him for her. To cut his throat while she watched. And he meant it, every word falling venomous from his mouth, cutting and beautiful. 

And people don’t think he’s a romantic. 

Dear Hubie is just as happy to see her as the populace of Vestra was, when she greets him in their bedchamber. She’s tired and sore from the carriage, her traveling clothes sweaty and her hair tangled where it’s pinned up, but it’s easily enough forgotten when he smiles her, that small sideways slice of a knife, their little secret.

“Oh, I missed you,” Dorothea says, almost on a sigh. She’s always surprised how true it is. She used to think of love and marriage as a shield, something she would use to guard against the world. But she was wrong; it isn’t only that. She never realized it could bite her back. It’s for the best: she wouldn’t have opened herself up to it had she known. “I brought you a present.” She tugs it from her satchel. Coffee, a blend only grown in Vestra, and all her coded notes tucked along with it in the bag. There is opposition brewing in Vestra, embers that will stoke into a fire if someone doesn’t put them out.

Dorothea won’t let them start another war. She has much more important things to do. 

“As solicitous as ever,” says Hubert, taking the pouch from her and tucking it away. He puts a hand to her waist, his touch lingering. Dorothea wraps both her arms around his neck and pulls him down into a kiss. Hubert is so damnably tall—Edie is always complaining over it, as though he has ever done anything but bring himself down to her level. Dorothea rather likes it. When he has to bend for it, she always knows that he wants her.

“I trust you had an enlightening visit,” Hubert says when she releases him. There’s a bit of a furrow in his brow. Very handsome.

Dorothea laughs behind her hand. “Oh, I did,” she says. “You’re jealous that I got to have all the fun while you were stuck playing guard dog, aren’t you.”

“Terribly so, I must admit.” Dorothea raises her hand to his face, brushes his hair from his eye, feeling fondness bubble up inescapably in her chest. Hubert _loves_ playing guard dog. It’s missing the chance to bite that he resents. 

“Don’t worry,” says Dorothea. “It wasn’t that exciting. I’ll tell you all about it when I have tea with the Emperor. I have some fun bits of gossip I’m sure you’ll love.”

Fun gossip, meaning it isn’t anything urgent. She feels Hubert relax that final inch under her hands. “I’ll look forward to it.”

“In the meantime.” Dorothea steps past Hubert and sprawls back on the bed. “I really have missed you, Hubie.”

“And I you.” He bends to her again—like a flower to the sun, she’s often thought. Terribly vain to imagine oneself that way, but, well. Hubie would say that dissembling with no purpose is intolerable; Edelgard would cup her cheek and tell her, falteringly, how bright her eyes are; the professor would watch her steadily and tell her in plain language not to put herself down. 

Her heart should be so awfully overcrowded, and yet everything fits so neatly. It never stops surprising her.

Hubert’s hands fit around her ankle, lifting her leg. “May I?”

Dorothea giggles. “Go ahead,” she says, and Hubert obliges, kneeling to strip her of her travelling boots in practiced movements. Hubert loves to do this sort of thing for her. Dorothea thinks he misses when he could do it for Edelgard every day. He still does, on occasion, when they make time. But it’s no longer part of their routine. The Emperor has servants to dress her and undress her, to let down her hair and her heavy crown. Edelgard was once his entirely to protect; now he shares her with the world.

Dear Hubert. Always working so hard for the outcomes he believes in, even when they’ll bring him sorrow. It aches, how much Dorothea loves that about him. 

She sits up, cupping his face in her hands and drawing him in, digging her bare toes into the carpet. Indulging in all of it: Hubert’s warm mouth, his hands steady at her waist, the abrupt noise he makes when she bites him. Dorothea can never be quite as rough with him as Ferdinand is. She just doesn’t have the heart for it. But she does enjoy the way he shivers when she worries at his lip, his eyes going dark as her fingernails prickle at his scalp and the back of his neck. 

Dorothea runs her thumb along his lower lip, where she’s made him bleed just the slightest bit. His eyes slide closed as she heals the cut. “You’ll take care of me, won’t you?” she says, breath ghosting along his cheek.

“Always, my dear,” Hubert says, so _serious_—but Dorothea did mean it, didn’t she? And he means it too. 

“Undress me,” she says, adopting a bit of her favorite imperious opera tone. It’s what the fictional Edelgard will sound like, once Dorothea finishes the opera. It works like a charm on Hubie, of course. He dips his head and begins unbuttoning Dorothea’s shirt with careful hands.

His eyes are warm on her skin once he pushes it off her shoulders. He unlaces her breast band, and Dorothea realizes he’s still wearing his gloves when he cups her breasts with a cool touch. She closes her eyes and enjoys it for a moment, his thumbs circling her nipples, squeezing her so gently. When she opens them again, he’s looking at her face, expression utterly reverent. Oh, Dorothea loves him. 

“Here,” she says, swallowing once to regain her composure. She takes his wrists in her hands one by one, working off his gloves. His hands are rough beneath them, scarred with a thousand poisons and daggers and small deceits. Dorothea rather likes them. They tell a story, Hubert’s hands. And they always feel delightful against her. 

She presses a kiss to his palm, just once, smiling at the way he colors. He’s so deceptively easy to fluster. She and Edelgard and Ferdinand are always giggling about it over tea. 

Dorothea laces their fingers together, and he grips her back tightly. “I dream about your hands when I’m gone too long,” Dorothea admits. She’s still learning how to speak like this. How to tell the truth instead of flirting sideways around it. But if anyone deserves this from her, it’s Hubert, who is never anything but honest with her, even when it’s difficult, even when he stumbles over it. He lies to the others he loves, when the occasion calls for it. Dorothea knows. But he never lies to her. That’s what it means to be married, he’d told her once, in the hushed close dark of their bed. To be united against the world. 

He watches her so steadily through it as she speaks. She can’t look away, though a part of her wants too; will, perhaps, always want to. “Your hair,” he says, at length. “Nothing else smells quite like it.”

Dorothea smiles, and turns to sit sideways on the bed. “Take it down for me?”

Hubert rises to perch beside her and begins pulling out pins, as carefully and precisely as he does anything. Dorothea leans back against him, soothed by the sound of it, by the way her hair goes loose, easing the tension along her temples. Hubert brushes his hands through it when he’s finished, rubbing at her scalp. Dorothea tips her head back, and he leans down to kiss down her neck, breathing in deep. His hands return to her breasts, bare now, and she gasps at the feel of it. 

“Getting a bit distracted, aren’t we?” Hubert asks her, lips grazing her jaw with just a hint of teeth, voice gone deep and dark.

“You started it, Hubie,” Dorothea says, feeling wonderfully disheveled with her hair in disarray, growing damp between her legs. “If we’re going to blame someone for the fact that I’m still half-dressed…”

“My apologies,” Hubert murmurs against her ear, giving her throat one last warm kiss. “Though I believe in action above sitting around and casting blame, as you well know.” He slides back to his knees, and this time she helps him as he gets her out of her skirt and smallclothes, a touch more hurried now.

“You certainly are a man of action, Hubie,” Dorothea says, tapping his cheek. “It’s one of my favorite things about you.”

“Is that a request?” Hubert’s eyes are glittering and luminous, looking up at her from the ground.

Dorothea giggles, and leans back on one hand. “A suggestion,” she says, stroking Hubert’s cheek. “Unlike our dear Edie, I would never deign to give you orders.”

Hubert gives her a stern yet heated look, as he always does when Dorothea mentions Edelgard in bed. It’s very cute. Dorothea doesn’t have much time to dwell on it. 

“As my lady wishes,” Hubert says, sending a startled jolt of heat through her, and then he hitches one of her legs onto his shoulder, pressing a sucking kiss to the inside of her thigh. Dorothea sighs, squirming just the slightest bit. He makes his way up her leg like that, and oh, it’s always like this—going from fizzy and fun to overwhelming in an instant. It’s such a heady rush, to have his attention focused so entirely on her. To think that anyone but Edie could get that from him. To think that Dorothea can.

He spreads her with the fingers of one hand, his other caressing her thigh. Sometimes when he does this he’s still wearing his gloves, and that’s its own kind of fun; but right now it’s nice to feel him so warm and close against her, his breath deliciously hot. 

He leans in to taste her, and Dorothea swallows her moan, her arms going unsteady beneath her. She flops back ungracefully, still just a bit surprised that she doesn’t even _mind_ when he makes her ungraceful. There’s no show she needs to put on; Hubert, as ever, wishes only to make her feel good. It’s the only gift from her he requires. 

“Oh, yes,” Dorothea says, giving it readily. “Just like that.” She curls the leg on his shoulder, pressing her heel into his back, dragging him closer. He knows just how to touch her—another one of the perks of marriage she hadn’t previously considered. He licks her open, just dipping inside, and then he presses in higher, tonguing lightly at her clit, never too hard just to start.

“Lovely,” Dorothea tells him, reaching down to pet at his hair, to curl her fingers around his ear. “You’re also so—oh—so lovely for me, Hubie, you do know that, don’t you?”

He moans at that, and she wriggles against the sheets at the feel of it against her. His grip on her thigh goes tighter, his thumb digging into her skin. “Harder, now,” she tells him, and almost before she’s finished speaking he obeys, his tongue pressed flat against her, right _there_. Dorothea gets both hands in his hair, yanking it harder than is perhaps polite, but Hubert never minds that sort of thing, not the way she would. He goes where she puts him, relentless, and Dorothea nearly shouts with it when she comes, bucking against his face.

“Mm,” she says, shivery and pleasantly rung out. Hubert’s petting her thigh, kissing her there lazily. Dorothea pokes him in the side with her toe. “Come up here, won’t you, sweetheart?”

Hubert obliges her in this too, sprawling inelegantly beside her. Dorothea takes his chin in her hand and kisses him where he’s wet with her, pressing her legs together again. “Lovely,” Dorothea tells him again when he breaks away, breathing hard. He closes his eyes, burying his face in her shoulder. Dorothea presses her hand against the bulge in his trousers, relishing the way he shudders as she rubs at him. He’s still fully dressed, save for the gloves.

“Dorothea,” he says. She loves the way he says her name always, but like this is particularly perfect: warm and rough and just a little pleading. 

“Something you want, dear husband of mine?” she asks.

“Not at this juncture, no,” he says into her neck. “I have—ah—a prior engagement later this evening.”

Dorothea laughs, giving him a parting squeeze, savoring his last little shiver. “Tea with her Imperial Highness?” she teases. “Or her advisor?”

Hubert snorts, uncurling himself from her shoulder. “As though you and von Aegir don’t have enough to gossip about without me adding fuel to the flames.” 

“Oh, Hubie. As if we could gossip about anything else.” Dorothea cradles his face in her hands and kisses him again, lingering and slow. “In that case, we’ll need to clean you up. But do you mind staying just a little while?”

“Of course,” Hubert says, accepting Dorothea’s weight easily as she drapes across his lap, tucking herself under his chin. His arms come up around her, and she burrows into him, curling her toes in the sheets. Thinking again on how terribly lucky she is, sated and happy with her husband running tender fingers through her hair.

“You know I love all the little outings we concoct,” Dorothea says. “I wouldn’t trade them for the world. I quite enjoyed my time in Vestra. But it is so nice to be home.”

“Yes,” Hubert says, voice buzzing against her ear. “I know the feeling quite well.”


End file.
